Tuesday Morning ponderings

I haven’t really been following the CBA lack of a negation’s as closely as I was before the college hockey season started. It’s becoming evident that the NHL owners are trying to see if the NHLPA’s resolve will develop fissures and start to fall apart. It doesn’t really appear to be happening just yet, although according to Michael Russo, “there are some players that are starting to fret over lost wages.”

I suppose, if you’re an older veteran NHL player like former SCSU Husky forward Matt Cullen, you only have a finite number of years to play before in the professional ranks before you become too old to play in the NHL anymore.

The thing that really bugs me is that this is the third lockout of Gary Bettman’s 19 year tenure as the NHL commissioner – so in my opinion he will go down in NHL history books as being the lockout commissioner. Bettman is highly unpopular with the NHL fans and the players – but he isn’t going anyway fast according to Christopher Botta of the Sporting News.

Octagon agent Allan Walsh, a persistent critic of Bettman’s, struck a similar chord last week. “The writing is on the wall,” said Walsh, whose clients include Pittsburgh goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. “Every sports commissioner has a certain shelf life, and Bettman’s has expired. We all know the lockout will end at some point, but Bettman has become such a toxic commodity for the game, it’s untenable after three lockouts that he be the person to grow revenues in partnership with the players going forward.”

ut unlike Logan, Bettman—who answers to the owners of a 30-team league and has the support of an overwhelming majority of them—is not going anywhere.

“Gary’s in this for the long term,” said Harvey Schiller, the former president of the Atlanta Thrashers and now chairman and CEO of GlobalOptions Group, a risk management and business solution company in New York. “He has majority support of ownership. Gary has made a commitment to them and they have made one to him.”

I consider myself a big time NHL fan and I watch at least 5-6 NHL games every week on the NHL Center Ice package, “when” the NHL is playing and not locked out. While I am saving myself $170.00 by not having the NHL this season, I would much rather spend the money.

So I find myself at a loss to find anything decent to watch on the television most nights. I guess I would rather watch the NHL than Broke Girls and Revolution, even though I do think both are decent shows.Personally, I would much rather watch the Minnesota Wild and the Boston Bruins, however, we don’t have that option right now.

I have seen some of the people that I follow on twitter say that they won’t be watching the NHL once the lockout is over – myself I will be crawling back the minute they solve this mess.

I do think that blame is on the NHL owners, I am with Minnesota Wild defenseman Ryan Suter who said.

“If you can't afford to (sign contracts) then you shouldn't do it. (Owner Craig Leipold) signed us to contracts. At the time he said everything was fine. Yeah, it's disappointing. A couple months before, everything is fine, and now they want to take money out of our contracts that we already signed.”

So for the time being – a fair number of us just have our college hockey – I know that’s how I am going continue to fill my NHL void with NCAA hockey until the NHL owners and the NHLPA come up with a solution. There have been a few other options that popup from time-to-time, I currently have a KHL game to watch on my DVR at home and there is going to be another KHL game on MSG on October 31st.